


The Eumenides

by MumblingSage



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Angst and Fluff and Smut, Boundaries, Canon-Typical Violence, Comfort Sex, Cunnilingus, Explicit Consent, F/M, Fingering, Fix-It of Sorts, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Torture, Light Bondage, Menstruation, Negotiations, Nightmares, Oral Sex, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Past Sexual Abuse, Porn with Feelings, Post-Canon, Roughhousing, Scars, Tenderness, Trust, characterization porn, painful backstory is more implied than explicit, water as a metaphor for love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-24
Updated: 2015-10-20
Packaged: 2018-04-11 00:12:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 16,570
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4413431
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MumblingSage/pseuds/MumblingSage
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They meet again in the Wasteland, both wrathful and kind.</p><p>“And so,” she said, “that seems to make right now my best chance.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Fury

They met in the Wasteland. The Wasteland’s no place for meetings. He had meant to avoid the tire tracks suggesting another motorcyclist had crossed this way, but his other options narrowed until the canyon was the only possible route. He kept his gun on hand, safety off, holding the grip in one hand along with a handlebar. Precarious to ride that way, but not as precarious as being caught unarmed.

But preparation didn’t do any good if you weren’t prepared to shoot first. And he wasn’t. He should have been, but the silhouette that appeared from the rocks ahead looked strange, looked familiar, and it was just enough to throw off his reaction. In the time it took him to determine that what he saw was really familiar, and was real, was _her,_ he had come close enough that she could see it was him, too.

Her rifle leaned against the canyon wall. She’d never have been able to reach for it in time if he had been an enemy. But she had looked down the scope as he was approaching. She knew who he was, knew she had no need for the weapon. Max understood that without needing to be told. In this at least, Furiosa’s actions weren’t hard to figure out.

They rode the rest of the morning without speaking, falling in alongside each other. When the path narrowed so that they had to go one by one, he let her proceed first. When the sun was highest, she silently gestured for a stop and shared her waterskin once they found the shade of an overhand to rest under. He had water of his own, but never enough, certainly not enough to refuse hers.

She took the skin back, pulling it from him so abruptly he wondered if he’d drunk too much. But she didn’t slosh the contents to check what remained, didn’t even strop to drink herself. She was looking down at him and frowning.

She looked so on edge that Max slowly, subtly brought his hands from his knees, turning to show the palms, letting his fingers spread. Furiosa’s frown eased, but her stare didn’t. And gradually he realized it wasn’t that she was cautious of him. Instead she looked the way he had felt before—uncertain if what she saw was real.

He nodded a little. Despite himself, the edges of his mouth pulled. Not quite a smile. Her lips twitched in answer and that seemed to be the end of it.

Eventually, he figured, they would need to talk. Explain where they were headed—if she at least had a destination; he didn’t—and decide how long their routes would run together. Right now, though, they rested. He stretched out his legs, stirring sand. Even in the shade, it was hot. Usually he would suffer through it. In front of her, he felt secure enough to take his jacket off, with the most valuable supplies he owned in its pockets now lying on the ground. Not baring himself, not exactly, but removing a weight as protective as it was uncomfortable. An unfamiliar lightness buzzed over his shoulders, forearms, and neck.

Furiosa unwound the scarf from her neck—not a black Imperator’s scarf, but one made from a lighter, bone-white fabric. From the Citadel. She hadn’t volunteered any information about the others they had left back there, and he didn’t ask. It wasn’t that Max didn’t care—though he didn’t have a lot of practice at caring any more, even to entertain the idea of asking after them suggested he hadn’t forgotten how—but he trusted that if there was anything wrong, if they needed any help he could give, Furiosa would have said so. Her silence meant they were all right without him. Without her, too.

She was still sending glances his way, gentler now, and Max returned them. Seeing what else he could gather, if not about how she came to be wandering the Wasteland like him then at least about how she was doing. She looked tired, not bone-weary but ready for rest, and dusty. Like him. Her face had healed perfectly, and she bore no new injuries or signs of sickness. She looked well. And she also looked _good_ , the sight of her made him glad, and that was more difficult to process. Being relieved to see her wasn’t a surprise; he knew he already had that much practice at caring. Not being able to look away was…unexpected.

Her fingers tugged at the buckles of the straps holding her metal arm, unfastening it with quick and expert movements. She hung the prosthetic on the handlebar of her cycle and strode back to the overhang. Tall enough that she had to duck to get under it, she moved with a predatory grace that would have made him nervous of anyone else. But now it made him want her attention on him just as his was on her. For her to look. Not as if she couldn’t believe he was there. As if she believed it completely.

He ran a hand through his hair, still short from the Citadel’s shearing but growing out enough to comb if he tried. He didn’t try often, but if he _was_ going to have her eyes on him he might as well look presentable. Using the scarf to mop sweat from her forehead and throat, she sat down beside him. Neither of them broke the silence. Neither of them would be any good at small talk, and it wasn’t time yet to discuss anything bigger.

He imagined the soft pressure of the cloth against her flesh, imagined the feeling of her sweat-slick skin. Maybe he had just been alone too long, and everything someone else did would be new to him, would be fascinating. Or maybe it was Furiosa in particular. He was too used to trying to inhabit others’ bodies by anticipating how they would hurt him. Always he had to watch for an opportunity to strike back or to escape.

He wasn’t waiting for an opportunity now. Not to escape her, not to attack or anything like it. He didn’t know whether she wanted what he suddenly did—to be watched, to feel, to touch—he didn’t know, for that matter, exactly what he wanted.

Her hand settled over his where it rested on his knee.  A warm weight, her palm a little slick. She still wasn’t entirely calm. Yet nothing about the gesture was aggressive. On the surface, the touch didn’t signify anything. They had been closer than this before. It could even be companionable. And it was, it was—he reached for the idea— _affectionate,_ despite or maybe because of her agitation.

And then he looked her way, and found her looking at him, and heard her mouth shaping his name.

“Max.” It was the first time someone else had said it in longer than he could remember. Someone present, someone real. Saying it in recognition rather than threat or accusation. And it was what he had wanted ever since he gave her his name, murmuring it as they were linked with each beat of his heart pushing his blood into her veins. Wanted wordlessly and hopelessly, desperately, and wanting to hear her say it was no preparation for how it actually happened.

Because sharing his blood wasn’t half as intimate as the sound of his name. And with it she said everything. Above all that she had heard him, that she had remembered, that even when she was fighting for her life she’d held onto his name. Even when she’d had no reason to expect they would ever see each other again.

With it she said how glad she was to be proven wrong.

Her grip on his hand tightened. He leaned closer to her. He had nothing to offer in return for what she had just given him, but she bent the rest of the way and took what he could.

He had kissed someone before, long ago, but it was buried knowledge, painful and sacrosanct, that couldn’t be practically applied to a situation as different as this. And Furiosa also kissed as if it was unfamiliar. They had to reinvent the motions together. Meeting with closed lips at first, dry and soft. Friction eventually prompted him to open his mouth, and then she parted hers to fit. The kiss deepened over long moments, slow and natural. It felt natural even though this wasn’t like anything they had ever done before, and they’d only ever been this close while trying to kill or to save each other.

He brought his free hand to the back of her neck, rock scraping against his knuckles as they shielded her from it. His fingertips brushed over the raised skin of her brand. It might not have been coincidence that at that moment her teeth closed on his lip, not biting but pulling. A burst of feeling flooded his awareness. Taking their minds away.

Her hand left his knee and started moving up his leg. Their breathing came rougher, faster. She pushed off from the wall and turned, her jaw knocking against his as she straddled him. Her touch still came higher, higher. He was about to return it when she suddenly stopped. Her hand reached up and caught his at her neck. The grip was tight enough to numb, and as they broke the kiss he was very glad he hadn’t reached for her anywhere else. 

This was what she truly looked like while on edge, not frowning but every line of her face drawn in tension. When her eyes met his, they softened a fraction. She let go of him at once.

He pulled his hand back into her line of sight, let it hang there.

“If we do this,” she said, “and I want to do it—but I might hate you afterwards.”

Her tone was too tightly controlled for him to read. It helped that he had no expectations—anticipation was a separate thing, and he was able to shove it aside. “Why?” he asked.

“I don’t usually… It might go wrong.”

“How?” he asked. Not moving beneath her. She didn’t move, either, not even an involuntary shudder. Her composure had returned, though, no longer rigidly unemotional, and she spoke with the faintest glimmer of frustration.

“It could hurt,” she said. “You or me. I don’t intend it to. And I don’t think you do, either. But if there’s a mistake, or the balance is wrong, if it ends up as if—one of us is _using_ the other…”

A sick feeling in his gut. He understood. Maybe she was afraid that if it went too badly wrong, he would hate her, too. Not just for inflicting an uncomfortable indignity, but for enjoying it. Even unintentionally. Even with the best intentions, he saw how that could be unforgiveable.

“We don’t have to,” he said.

Her nod was curt. “And maybe we shouldn’t.”

But she didn’t move away from him. He didn’t want her to, either. After enough moments of silence to make the point, she said, “It’s just that I don’t think I could hate you so easily.”

“Or that I could hurt you.” He meant it not as much as an observation as a pledge. She caught that, nodded again.

“And so,” she said, “that seems to make right now my best chance.”

It seemed unlikely she had been looking for such a chance. But knowing when to take an opportunity was a habit of survival. This wasn’t a case of life or death, but— _healing,_ he thought, and that was important, too. A naïve way to view it, and too simple, but what was going on felt too complex to be explained in anything except simple terms.

He might have thought too that if it failed she could afford to hate him, a wasteland wanderer, a fallen road warrior with waking nightmares in his head and a name that barely mattered. But her hand touched his now, taking it where it waited in the air, pulling it down. Companionable. And he knew then that she wouldn’t discard his friendship easily.

Friendship. Is that what this was? He hadn’t considered them friends before, not even as he saved her life. Or when she saved his. She found him valuable, that was all and that was enough. Reliable. She trusted him.

And he knew where she had come from. Enough to suspect she had never, or at least not often enough in far too long a time, fucked anyone she completely trusted or respected. She might not be sure of how to go about it. How to keep a balance of power, of pleasure, of whatever it was that kept one person from using another. She might have found the two things, sex and respect, to be mutually incompatible.

But now she wanted to try.

And if it failed, if she hated him—she could afford it, after all.

Still, he said, “I don’t think you will. Hate me.” He glanced towards his hand, where the marks her grip left on his wrist had already faded. “Or hurt me.”

The corner of her mouth pulled, not really forming a smile, but twitching enough to draw his attention to how full and red her lips looked after the kiss. “You deserve the warning.”

“I don’t usually do this, either.”

At that, she laughed. Short and soft and quiet like the buzz of insects’ wings. “But you want to?”

“If you do.”

“I do.” She spoke the words deep enough to resonate inside him. Her mouth was near his, but they didn’t connect. She rested her forehead against his, closing her eyes. Wind howled at the rock above them, and it struck him again how out of place this all was. There was no place for this, for them.

As if in defiance of that fact, he turned his hand inside her grip and ran it slowly up her forearm. She let it continue until his fingers reached her elbow, tucked against her body. Now he could skim her ribs, her breast, covered only in thin cloth. She could stop him, too, just as she could have at any point. But not being stopped wasn’t enough.

“May I…?” The question was incongruous and he nearly garbled the words, not used to asking this kind of thing, already slurring with the distraction of her weight and heat.

“Do it.” From her throat, a growl that suddenly broke higher, “Please.”

When he did, he could feel her breath. Warm, damp air brushing his lips in time to the expansion and contraction, the rise and fall of flesh beneath his hand. A rhythm slightly different from his own, jarred as his thumb stroked one of her nipples rigid. He heard the rasp of her sigh and it pulled at something inside him. Somewhere under this cloth she bore scars, one of them from the knife he forced between her ribs so that she could breathe. There wasn’t erotic appeal in the thought, and it seemed too odd a focus for sentimentality (he didn’t understand how he could _be_ sentimental, anymore), but it swept through his mind along with suggestions of everything else beneath her clothing, so much that he didn’t want to wait to see.

She didn’t care for waiting, either. When he pulled the fabric up, she took his meaning and started to unwind it. It wasn’t a matter of being helpful. As they undressed each other it became like wrestling. Quick and rough enough to set his heart pounding. She kicked as he pulled her trousers off and scratched his chest as she tugged his shirt over his head, though not enough to break the skin or leave a mark. Their eyes were open, flickering over each other. He saw muscles and scars, fine hair the tarnished gold of dust in sunlight, he saw her, her, her. He lived in a world of strangers. He didn’t look at people and see who they were, but he could see who she was, and see more of her than he ever had before.

Her gaze and her fingertip settled beneath his collarbone, at the small circular tear mark from the hooked needle he’d taken out of himself however many long days ago. The day they met. She ran her finger as if along an invisible trail over his shoulder and along his back.

He didn’t mind when she circled the brand. It would have been worse if she tried to shy away from it. Her touch was gentle, almost too gentle to feel through the thickness of scar tissue, and her expression didn’t register distaste or disgust. But when it seemed about to slip lower, when he felt the increased pressure of her hand as if she might turn him, he pulled back. Not all the way but enough to stop her exploration.

“Nothing worth seeing there,” he said. And it never would be. Just a crude evaluation of whatever good he could do in parts, and a reminder to keep him muzzled. He wasn’t proud of those marks or the record they told. And it might have been different if it was something they both bore, like the brand. Or merely practical, like the mark of the needle. But because it was useless, and because it wasn’t a humiliation she had shared, he couldn’t show it now. While she already knew what had happened to him, she didn’t need to witness all the details. Any more than he would ever learn anything that happened to her, which he had been spared, unless she chose to tell him.

Furiosa nodded. “Okay.” Her hand stroked down his front instead, and it found other scars there, along with the rare and fortunate patch of unmarked skin where nerves thrilled under her touch. He kissed her again, mouth open and wet and messy. Their tongues brushed each other, slid over their lips. It wasn’t artful but it was good, a swell of sensation that seemed to have swallowed his entire body. The tug of her fingers settling in his hair was distant, but when she pulled his head back to focus on his lower lip and chin and jaw he groaned aloud, a reaction as involuntary as a cry of pain.

She pulled back as if startled. Then the thin line that was left of his vision flashed white with her grin.

Their groins pressed together through leather. He was still wearing his trousers. With a sound of both arousal and frustration, she brought her hand down again and started pulling. He went still as she worked on the straps of his leg brace, but she seemed to know just how to undo them, and she was perfectly careful. Once it was safely put aside her movements became sharper and less patient. He joined in, half aiding, half struggling. Resisting her was the last thing on his mind, but just letting out energy, and feeling hers turned on him, was too tempting. Was almost _fun_. It had been at least a thousand days since he had done anything playful, anything just because it felt good.

And as they rolled, dust stirring and settling over their skin, he saw her smile again.

He made sure to be under Furiosa when they stopped, his back shielded in soft sand. And just as it kept her from reaching around him even by accident, it also made him much less likely to pin her down, which might become too easy otherwise. Without a doubt she could pin Max, too, but it would take more effort, and he trusted that she wasn’t going to try. Already she slid off and lay alongside him. Her hand ran between his thighs, began to knead his flesh with soft waves that soon made his hips rise off the ground.

Returning the favor, he found her hot and swollen with arousal. Wetness drizzled over his fingers as they skimmed between her folds. She spread her legs, bringing one across his body and opening for his reach. He nudged a fingertip in, felt her muscles seize and shudder and pull. He worked deeper, still slowly but eased by how slick she was, urged on by the mirroring strokes of her hand on his cock. Her breast brushed against his chest and he cupped it. She sighed as his thumb circled her nipple, an unconscious noise of pure contentment. For that sound, he was ready to do anything.

Her hand missed a stroke as he put his mouth over her breast, but he didn’t think either of them cared. He tasted salt and underneath it the unique quality of skin-sweetness, mixed with the sound and ghostlike caress of her breath over his ear, the pull of her gasp. Her inner walls were tight around his fingers, closing on and releasing them. Her hips rocked, each time rising more than they fell, coming up until she knelt above him.

His lips came off her with a pop, and he replaced them with his hand again. When her head fell back, he couldn’t resist tracing the revealed line of her throat. It brought another sigh, but then the pressure of his fingers seemed to become too much. She stiffened, pulling back and raising her left arm to press against his, freezing it in place.

Their eyes met, and she gave a small shake of her head. “Careful.”

She let go of his cock, grasped his hand and pushed it away from where it rested just above her shoulder. The motion wasn’t violent but quick. He saw her swallow. She was breathing hard, and some of that was from excitement. Not all of it. Her gaze slipped past him and her arm crossed her chest. A self-calming gesture, and from what he could tell it was working, yet it still left the question of what to do next. Or not to do.

“Hey,” he said. Intending his voice to be soft, but instead it rasped like a whetstone, and what sharpened was the look in her eyes. Not hatred, no, far from it. A keen intensity. Hot and intimate.

Max matched it. “Okay.” He raised both hands—the one which had skirted too close to her windpipe, the one still glistening from her wetness—and brought them level with his shoulders. He kept them there, the fingers curling into relaxed fists on either side of his head. His knuckles rested in the cool sand, barely stirring it. If he tried hard not to move, they would begin trembling. So he didn’t try. He relaxed his limbs as if resting. Inside he didn’t feel restful; he was coiled with anticipation and nervousness and whatever nameless thing spread roots through his chest when he looked at Furiosa. He wanted to touch her, but not as much as he wanted it to be okay for her.

Almost too low to hear, she answered, “Okay.” She nodded. By her expression, he knew that no one had ever done something like this for her before, just as he had never surrendered control to anyone so explicitly.

It wasn’t that he trusted her more than she did him. They were exactly matched.

Her fingertips pressed his mouth, firm as a kiss, and then traced down. At the light sting of her nail over his chin, rasping between stubble, his breath caught—again not in pain but in something as overwhelming, because the touch was so delicate he barely felt it but still it ran through the nerves in his skull like an embrace beneath the skin, above the bone. The small point of contact with her was the epicenter. He didn’t know how far it would spread in the end.

Her hand lifted, skipping over his unshielded neck, and she resumed by sliding along his chest. Somewhere between scratching and a caress. His pulse throbbed. It didn’t seem possible that his body could get any hotter or harder. And then he bit back a sound—instinctively; he would have shared it if he could—as she grasped his cock and ran it between her lower lips. She guided him inside her, sinking slowly. With an odd impulse as though to give her privacy, he looked up from where they were joining. At her throat, which pulsed with a swallow, tightened as she inhaled. It drew her breasts up but then he was seeking higher, past her open mouth as it was made wet by a flash of tongue, and finding the gleam of her half-closed eyes. They shut entirely as she breathed out, long and harsh, dropping to a growl.

The sound was fierce and determined and almost angry, almost joyous. She rode him, and at the new sensation of her tightening around him he moaned aloud. And again as she thrust and rocked. Her eyes opened and she rose on her knees as he met her with a deeper stroke.

Max brought up a hand—slowly, keeping every increment of the motion visible. Ready to stop, ready to be _made_ to stop if that was what she needed to do. But she didn’t reach out to pin his wrist or knock him away. Her own hand braced on his chest, pushing in time to her lift and fall. Her gaze followed as he approached her body, his fingertips stroking first at her side, following the lines of her ribs at an angle down to her core. With his thumb he rubbed between her folds until he found the firm swell of her clit and could brush softly until she gasped. He thought she might have forgotten that part of her was even there, so caught up in other matters. And that wouldn’t surprise him, because when he watched her he was only intermittently aware that his cock existed and the swell of pleasurable pressure sweeping through him came as her inner muscles contracted around him. Which they did now, tightening in reaction to the attention on her clit.

He tried squeezing it gently between his thumb and forefinger, but she twisted from his grip, too sensitive for the intensity of that touch. Instead he used the heel of his palm, holding it for her to rub against with her entire mound, a diffused caress that he could _feel_ spreading through her, sending deep tremors.

Her fingers wove around his. At first she pulled by them, guiding his strokes, but then she slipped past his palm to take up the rhythm herself.  She knew just how to do it. He moved up to her breast, mimicked the circles she brushed below in curves around her nipple until it was hard as a stone. He wanted to taste her, wanted his mouth on her again.

He reached over her shoulder to cradle the back of her head. She sensed what he wanted and granted it, bending down for a kiss. And she seemed as hungry for it as he was, pulling hard on his tongue before sliding her own past it. Pressing deep as he could take her. The kiss turned chaotic as she gasped suddenly for breath, and something happened where they were connected that made him moan, a small thread of sound that broke with her next thrust.

He had kept his left hand at his side for as long as he could, but as they crashed against each other their balance felt precarious. He steadied her with a hand on her waist. The scar on his palm rubbed against a scar in her side. His fingers dug into her skin, desperate to hold her. Between them her hand still moved in small, tight circles.

“Furiosa,” he whispered, just wanting the shape of it in his mouth. Her name. He didn’t know what it would mean to her, but whatever it was he offered it gladly.

Her climax was quiet, a long shudder and a rising hitch in her breath. It seemed more like relief than ecstasy, but it was thorough. By the time it was over her tremors had brought him to the edge of coming himself, and then she rolled from him bonelessly. He couldn’t suppress a groan at being left. She smiled at that, lazy and satisfied. Her hand was there to finish him off, a little rough from distraction and inexperience, but enough. Her mouth was there to swallow his sharp cry.

Into it, he murmured her name again. Her lips shaped a single syllable in answer.

Afterwards there was nothing to do but rest. Thoughtless, not even minding the friction of sand on sweat-damp skin as he settled his limbs or the stickiness drying on his chest. Furiosa remained with her hand on one of his shoulders and her head pillowed on the other. Her long legs folded between his. Her weight anchored him.

He couldn’t tell if he slept or not. If he had dreams, he didn’t remember them.

When he opened his eyes and got up she wasn’t lying beside him anymore. She stood outside by her motorcycle. She’d put the prosthesis back on and was unpacking something from the saddlebags.

A blanket had been laid over him. Or maybe both of them, going by the depression in the sand where she had been. He pulled it off, wadded it into the best folds he was capable of while still coming around, and found his clothes lying within reach.

Furiosa nodded to the blanket as she ducked under the overhang. “You can keep that.”

The one he’d last owned had fallen apart in rags almost thirty days before, and temperatures dropped sharply with the sun, so he was grateful. But as soon as she said it, dividing what they each would keep, he knew they wouldn’t be going the same route. Wouldn’t be curling together under this blanket—if either of them were the kind to cuddle like children anyway. Max wouldn’t have guessed that she was, but couldn’t tell about himself. Especially not after today.

It was almost enough to make him wish they hadn’t met. Because with her he felt things that he didn’t feel before, that he wouldn’t feel alone. That he shouldn’t feel. After this, it was obvious they would have to part ways. It had been too much, doing this together, coming this close. It couldn’t continue.

She might have planned to go from the beginning. So had he, consciously or not. He understood why she was about to leave because it was what he would have done, too. Just as he hadn’t needed to ask why she left the Citadel. Maybe she meant to spare him the choice by going first. If they intended to stay together longer, if they intended to do anything more, if they’d had any more time, they probably wouldn’t have made love under the overhang. If that was the word. They would have moved slower towards whatever it was.

But they didn’t and they hadn’t.

They ate while she was packing to go, sharing from both of their supplies. They were about equal on water at this point. She had produce from the Citadel, not the freshest but still instinctively mouth-watering. When they put their stores away again, he made sure a pack of dried meat made its way into hers.

She didn’t say anything about it. So far everything they had done since getting up had been in silence. He stepped outside with her, stood for a moment together. The sun beat down from a cloudless sky, but they were in the lengthening shadows and wind whipped around the rocks like a chill tongue.

Furiosa was holding the white scarf in her hand. She reached for him, tied it lightly around his neck. She hadn’t done that with the first one she’d given him—the black Imperator’s scarf, which he’d had to tear up as a bandage at the last settlement he’d passed through. That one he’d found with the rest of the supplies loaded on the Vuvalini motorcycle. The gift almost hidden. This was more forthright.

He wondered if she offered it for the same reasons.

It was a distinctive piece of fabric. It would make him easy to recognize.

She leaned close, so close he half expected her to kiss him. But of course she didn’t. She murmured, “Northeast.”

He swallowed against something small but dense growing in his chest, surprise crystalizing into certainty. “How far?” he asked.

She shrugged. “Depends what I meet up with.”

He watched her walk to her motorcycle, load it and mount up. Their gazes met as she looked back once. He listened as the engine growled to life, and as the sound faded into a purr and then silence.

He moved out not long after. It was growing late, and he wouldn’t get far before sunset, but even a few kilometers was something. Even without a destination.

He didn’t want to remain there alone, where the sand was still stirred from the motion of their bodies, where the air smelled alive with the memory of her.

At first Max headed north, as straight a shot as he could make on the terrain. When it grew too dark to move through the canyons he stopped the bike, and started again as soon as the black sky turned gray. He kept the sun to his right. The Wasteland wasn’t a place for meetings.

All the same, two days later, he started to turn east.


	2. Kindness

The second time they met, it was in an ambush. In a manner of speaking. He had fallen into the ambush—a gang on foot, desperate from lack of gasoline and of water, too, going by the sunken looks of their eyes and the feverish heat beating off their bodies. Dehydration hadn’t weakened them as much as Max would like.

There was something ironic in capturing a universal donor and only wanting his blood for drinking. And in someone with his experience being brought down by half a dozen thirsty people on foot. Which was just one more reason that he couldn’t afford to die this way. Somewhere Max had taken up pride again.

After he’d expended the last bullets in his handgun, as he was holding off the remaining five raiders and their knives, reinforcements arrived on what seemed to be the two motorcycles the band had running. Engines snarling, they moved fast enough to tear up the ground. They weren’t fast enough to shake off their pursuit.

In the Wasteland, the smart thing for a single rider to do after getting her enemies to turn tail was to move on in the opposite direction as fast and far as possible. He later wondered what this pack had done to ensure that Furiosa wouldn’t let them go, but he didn’t need to know.

At first, just hearing the engines, he expected that was the end of it; he’d go down fighting, buried under more grasping bodies, or they’d find it easier to just run him over. If he was lucky it would be finished before he had to feel them opening his veins.

The line of thought was cut short as gunshots cracked the air—and the forearm of the raider who had been trying to pin him.  A motorcycle overturned nearby in a spray of sand, the rider’s body spinning heels over broken head in imitation of the wheels. An exit wound appeared in the forehead of the second captor leaning over Max. The bullet ricocheted off rock a little too close to his head. Too close for the sniper’s comfort, too, and the next seconds saw her entrance into the melee wielding the butt of the rifle like a club.

His attackers could handle one desperate captive, but the presence of an ally seemed too much for them. Their pack splintered into individuals, vicious and desperate, yet disorganized, without the advantage that numbers had given them. That advantage was now on their side, Max and Furiosa’s.

It didn’t matter at what exact moment he knew it was her—the choice to fight hand-to-hand rather than risk him with a shot’s ricochet, or the perfect aim of those shots, or the purr of the third motorcycle engine, which he had once listened to too intently not to recognize now. They were together, fighting together, and _fighting_ was the most important part. One of the raiders had drawn an ancient army pistol and was trying to aim at her. Max wrestled the piece off him.

Unarmed, he took off running, and his friend with the broken arm joined him. Max let them go, not knowing if there was enough ammunition to bring them down and still deal with the remaining fighters. One of those he fired on as she leapt towards Furiosa’s exposed back. Furiosa had pinned the other cyclist to the ground with her left hand around his neck. The iron fingers pinched, and Max heard the high, strained whirr of a small motor. This replacement prosthesis didn’t seem as strong as her first; scraps had been cobbled together, and the toy’s engine sounded about to give out. She was pushing it hard.

The raider kicked, trying to force her off. She only leaned closer to his face—marked  like his hair with streaks of dried blood, a sort of vampiric decoration—and snarled. Then she reared back, shoving all the weight of her body against his throat. He was no longer making a sound. But they were still struggling, and half by instinct Max moved to end it. Aiming carefully, he planted a bullet through the man’s temple. A waste of ammunition, maybe, but it saved her time and trouble.

At the sound of the shot, she looked up, and he saw the rage in her eyes. As they met his it boiled off. And then the raider’s hand, which had been lifting towards her side, fell to the ground. The knife fell out of it.

Neither of them had noticed the knife. It was a small blade, curved and keen. Enough to open someone up, to make their veins or even their guts flood out. More than enough.

Furiosa stood and pulled at the wire driving the motor in her arm. It quieted. A moment of absolute silence. Then she started walking, and Max turned to follow her.

They looked over the motorcycles, the bodies. Without having to discuss it, they started salvaging what they could. Guns, bullets. He took the knives after remembering the two figures who had run off. One of the raider’s cycles was wrecked, but the other was in better condition than Max’s after the ambush. They filled its tank and the tank of Furiosa’s with as much gas as they could siphon off. He gathered the rest in a battered plastic jug.

As he did, he exchanged glances with her. Taking the gasoline, taking the weapons, it was a death sentence for those left behind. They couldn’t even bring down another traveler to cannibalize unless they found someone as unlucky as they were, equally unarmed and all but doomed anyway. Furiosa nodded to him. He emptied the tank and they loaded their motorcycles and rode.

They headed northeast, but at a shallower angle than he had taken the past few days. The sun was behind them, stretching their shadows.

They rode perhaps forty kilometers before Furiosa stopped. Her shoulders were low as she stepped off the cycle. He dismounted and went to her, his movements so sharp and abrupt it wouldn’t have been a surprise if she recoiled. She didn’t. She let him look over her—white shirt, tawny skin, black leather all whole, unbroken. A bruise was blooming on her arm and he could make out a few scratches, and a few spots of blood that didn’t seem to be hers.

His heart was pounding in his throat so hard it could have choked him. Could have, could have. It was a funeral drum of possibility. Stopping, it caught up with him. Now that he wasn’t moving he could see. She was all right. But she could have been—otherwise.

The same was true of him, of course, and maybe this decompression was partly a defense mechanism, a distraction from how close he had come to his own death. But he’d gotten used to coming close. As long as there was something to do, some way to try to survive, he’d be all right. There was a sort of simplicity in having nothing to preserve and nothing to lose but his life.

It wasn’t so simple now. He fought down panic. He found something to do, not for survival, but necessary nonetheless. A spray of blood covered the side of her cheek. He took off his scarf and used it to rub at her face. Furiosa bent her head, letting him, although not without a flash of expression that looked almost wary. Confusion. Their eyes met, but he couldn’t hold the gaze, and yet as his rolled away she seemed to see something in it.

Her frown eased out. Confusion faded, and so did the deeper feeling that had marked her face as starkly as the blood—and for the same reason. Something of fear and something of rage. It had been there since she entered the ambush, but now in its place, welling up like water from a spring, came something no calmer but kinder.

Max licked the pad of his thumb and used it to scrub away the last drying red smear. Furiosa nodded, stepped back from him. She went to her motorcycle and returned carrying water and a scrap of clean rag.

When she opened the waterskin to dampen the cloth he made a sound, not questioning so much as startled. It didn’t make her hesitate. She rested a hand on his shoulder, a light touch that still seemed to travel through him to the ground. It was a mirror of the way he had touched her, though steadier.

Wetness, cool against the side of his neck as she swiped at a mark there. Then she nudged his face up to clean the blood drying in a clot under his nostrils and at the crease of his upper lip. His nose felt tender when her fingers brushed it in passing, but he didn’t think it was broken. It had taken a blow from a fist or an elbow while he was struggling for his life, or for hers. Already the exact sequence of events was becoming a blur. It was like that; he either remembered everything or almost nothing at all.

Remembering nothing was okay.

She pressed a clean, damp corner of the cloth against his lips when he licked them. “There’s more water,” she said. “I know a spring around here. About a quarter of a day away.”

The sun was getting low. “We’ll go tomorrow,” he said, part suggestion, part request, part observation. She wouldn’t have brought it up if she didn’t plan for them to.

“Yes.”

In the meantime, they washed, clearing away blood and grime. She’d bent her head, the gesture silently beckoning for his help washing the back of her neck. He gave it, but didn’t make the same gesture in return, and she didn’t seem to expect it. He stripped out of his jacket to get at his neck and forearms, but for now she kept on her prosthetic arm with its straps and padding. She seemed satisfied with how it was working.

She brought out a second waterskin, smaller, to drink from. After a day of riding, the liquid inside was almost body temperature. But when it reached his mouth he was so thirsty that the only thought in his mind, fleetingly, was that he understood why people would try to from drink each other if they couldn’t get anything else.

He drank messily and wiped away the excess from his chin. It was faintly pink. The inside of his mouth didn’t taste metallic—the thought of swallowing blood, even his own, made his stomach churn—and he figured his nose had started bleeding again.

“Here.” From a pouch at her belt she offered him a wad of fabric, almost as soft and fine as the scarf. There were rags in his jacket pockets, good enough for bandaging, but he didn’t refuse. Didn’t get the chance to, because suddenly her fingers were cupped over his face, providing gentle pressure. It was an incongruous image. Bordering on undignified, if dignity meant anything to him at this point. He decided it didn’t.

After a few seconds, she left him to hold the cloth in place and he heard the scrape of footsteps in sand, the rustle of saddlebags. He figured she was putting the waterskins away and getting ready camp for the night. When he could swallow without feeling a line of something metallic run down his throat, he eased up his grip. Another few seconds and he was able to join her.

“Okay?” she asked.

“Yeah.” He looked over her again. “You?”

She almost nodded. He caught the beginning of the movement, caught the moment when something she saw or thought changed her mind. When instead she leaned closer and put her lips on his.

It wasn’t quick but it wasn’t deep, either. And it wasn’t a hard kiss, wasn’t a prelude to something rough, ravaging, although it could have been. In its gentleness it wasn’t practical, wasn’t even kind. It was only tender.

He hadn’t been touched with pure tenderness in a long time, in lifetimes. He knew intuitively, the way he knew fire burned, that it could only do one of two things. It could glance off, an anomaly that made no impression. Leaving him as if untouched. Or it could break him completely.

It did neither.

He kissed her back. Soft, slow. Returning tenderness wasn’t as difficult as he would have expected; in fact it felt almost familiar. At least where she was concerned.

But it wasn’t all tenderness, either. He parted his lips, waited until he felt her slide between them. Pulled at her tongue with something as strong as thirst. He wasn’t sure what he sought from her. Maybe reassurance. Proof of wholeness. Or what passed for wholeness out here.

It wasn’t for comfort or wholeness that he licked stray drops of water from her skin. He found the taste of her, the feeling of her, the feeling _in_ her that he could sense by the shudder in the wake of his tongue. His hands were moving over her, without direction, without any real goal. Just for the pure good fortune of touching her.

That was the same reason they had come together the first time—because they were lucky enough to be able to. Not for comfort, but because they had nothing better to do. Of course they had separated afterwards. Why should they share a road? Except, it seemed, when there were people they needed to kill.

“Hey,” she whispered, her fingers fanning against his side.

It was safer to be together, and for anyone else that might be a reason to stay. But it wasn’t safe enough. _She’d almost—he’d almost lost—_

He tried to force the words out of his mind, ghost whispers, not mocking but too late to warn.

_How could you be so careless, Max? How did you miss the knife? How could you fall into that trap in the first place?_

_It was obvious, Max! How could you—_

For the first time, he answered them. _Let me have this._

Silence, as if they were stunned mute at being addressed. Furiosa’s mouth was at his ear, her breath warm and damp, shaping no words, only caressing him.

 _Let me have this._ If their fight had failed, if _almost_ landed on the wrong side—if she had come just too late, if he had debating pulling the trigger just a moment longer—then it wouldn’t have mattered at all.

Almost losing wasn’t the same as losing.

They’d been lucky.

Her pulse jumped in the side of her neck. He nuzzled closer, seeking it out. It was proof, hot, urgent, and intimate. When he approached the curve of her throat she pulled back. Her metal hand came up, pressing his chest, gentle but enough to keep him in place. He knew better than to be careless touching her there.

But he needed to feel her. The need cut with fear, straining his heart and lungs and brain with bursts of adrenaline as much as desire. Even with the ghosts gone quiet—today wasn’t a bad day for ghosts—he kept seeing the glint of the knife. Hearing her snarl sharpen. The last moments of the fight wouldn’t fade, wouldn’t blur. And red, he saw it when he closed his eyes, a field of red and a stream of it, pouring out. There’d have been no replacing it this time. He didn’t even have a transfusion kit with him, and the raiders sure as fuck hadn’t.

His hands were on her and she was warm, she was safe, and he knew that as long as he was touching her. Her fingers were even warmer than the rest of her, hot metal. They curled against his chest, gathering the fabric of his shirt.

“Okay?” she asked once more.

And he couldn’t lie with a nod and say, “Okay,” right back. Even though physically, he was. They were okay. They were lucky. They had survived.

Her eyes scanned his face and then his entire body. Her awareness wrapped around him without becoming too deep, too sharp.

“Are you scared?” she asked. Her voice was soft but steady enough to be clear.

His wasn’t. _Yes_ pulled at his lips but wouldn’t pass his throat. He tried to raise words, choking on them. _Always_.

No, not always. Fear had its place in the Wasteland. _Fear_ was rational, fear reminded you to run and showed you what to run from. It was a survival adaptation. But _being afraid_ was not. Carrying fear when there was nothing, no reason to feel it, that was useless. You couldn’t afford to be afraid. To take the fear so deep it become part of you, it became what you were.

But right now, in this moment, he was afraid.

Her hand released him, engine faintly whirring. “Of me?”

“No.” That word at last came easily.

“ _For_ me?” She sounded only surprised. Not disgusted, as it would be fair to be, or affronted, which would be equally fair.

Her skin pressed against his as she put her right palm over his fingers. Not prying them from her, but holding them in place. He was touching her just above the waist. If not for belt straps and leather armor, he could have felt her scars.

“I’m okay.” Reaching higher, then, she brushed his lips. “And you’re okay.”

“Yeah.”

They exhaled at the same time. Matching each other, half-consciously. She kissed him, and if she meant it out of tenderness or comfort she expressed those things with fierceness, almost fury. Her teeth caught his lower lip and pulled at it. He nipped her back and felt her growl, silently, and shiver in a way that wasn’t from anger at all.

“We’re gonna be okay,” she said. Without rage, without gentleness, though he thought he heard something of both. And he could trust the sound.

He kissed her again, because there was nothing better he could do. This, too, had brought them together before, once they knew they could. It was the simplest, the easiest way to express so much. All the things he felt when he was with her that he didn’t feel alone. Like _afraid_. Like _safe_.

Like _better_. Not whole, perhaps not even healing, but…better, somehow.

Furiosa unpacked blankets from the back of her motorcycle and he added his own, piling them into a sort of nest on the sand. Once the sun set, it would cool rapidly out in the open. But it was all open out here—dunes and flats, but no solid shelter in sight. They’d left the hills behind. It meant no one could sneak up on them, but this place seemed too barren even for ambush.

He joined her at the center, and they built the nest up with the clothing they removed. He rolled his jacket into a cushion. She unbuckled her prosthetic and turned to let him unlace the armor over her midriff. When she put those back on her cycle she stopped to pick up the waterskin and cloth they’d used to wash. Worth using again. Dust shifted under fabric and mixed with sweat to make a muddy grime. Undressing didn’t uncover any injuries, though. Maybe they weren’t chrome, he thought dryly, but they were all right.

She removed her trousers and then, stepping back, began to unwrap the cloth folded between her thighs. She lay it out on the sand to dry, revealing faint spots of red.

“Over now,” she told him with a shrug. “I just had to be sure.”

He returned her shrug. “What would a little more blood be, anyway?”

The comment seemed to take her aback, but after a moment she flashed a smile. Completely naked now, she returned to the blanket and knelt in front of him. She reached for his belt buckle but let her hand hover there. Her eyebrows rose in a silent question.

Nodding, Max settled back and let her undress him. Her eyes narrowed with focus. One-handed, she undid buckles and straps. As before, she held his knee brace carefully as she removed it and set it aside. She was brisker about his other things. He lifted his hips to help her but shivered at the brush of her fingers. Anticipation and arousal both stirred, grew. His mind felt almost like it was overheating, and then—it stopped. Her hand ran up his bare chest, pushing him back. He fell gladly. He lay there, just feeling.

Stars were coming out above. She eclipsed them, straddling him and touching him.

First he heard the sluice of water, felt the cool, wet cloth moving over him. Clearing away dust and sweat. Then came her skin against clean skin.

With tenderness, but not too much. She didn’t avoid his bruises or raw scrapes, but went over them lightly. He grasped her hips and held them as if for balance, only slowly sliding his hands farther up. Over muscle, over scars. When he reached her breasts she bent closer, rubbing the nipples hard against his palms. But her eyes remained on her own hand, following where it tracked.

Her fingers scaled his ribs, swept along his side. They curved towards his back incidentally, then moved on. She hadn’t avoided his other scars, but he knew she wouldn’t try to explore the mark there, wouldn’t touch it on purpose, and because he could trust that fact he stopped keeping track of how close she came after the first few seconds of vigilance. He felt. Just that.

Through carefulness or tenderness or what he at first suspected might be their opposite, she went slow. She lingered with a coiling caress over one nipple until it tightened, or skimmed his lower lip with a touch that came mostly from her fingernail. Her thumb traced his jaw. Like it had beneath the overhang, the singing of nerves brought out a sound he couldn’t hold back, half sigh, half breathless shout.

Furiosa kissed it out of his mouth. Her tongue stroked along the route of her fingers, which now pressed past his lips. He sucked on them, coaxing a groan from her in return. She pulled free and her touch was slick as it glided down his chest. His pulse spiked in its wake. And she felt it, her palm running over him gently as if to soothe.

He’d wrestled with her before; he knew when she was being deliberately gentle. What he didn’t know at first was why. She didn’t need to worry about breaking him. Nothing she did would.

She knelt back, shifting her weight closer to his core. His hands fell from her. She caught one, squeezed it. Folded it over his chest, her touch a silent command to stay there.

She moved farther down, her legs coming between his and nudging them apart. He spread them, letting her settle there. He kept his hands still. Hers ran along his thigh. In the twilight, he tried to read the expression crossing her face, the tension sliding in her shoulders. Maybe he looked interesting from the new angle. But it was more than that.

Something about the way she had looked while straddling him made his mind stutter. Trying to form a warning when he knew there was no need for one. Even though he’d seen her try to strangle someone not hours before. He wasn’t in danger from her, even while naked and as unarmed as it was possible to be.

It was that thought which solved the mystery. He didn’t need her gentleness, and he didn’t want her to be hesitant. But she wanted to be gentle and maybe she needed it, too. Needed to touch someone out of kindness. They both did, if only because they needed to have something that separated them from the kind of people they’d had to kill today. Something that made them different from hunters and murderers, from survivors who had become so desperate to survive that they’d turned into animals that should be put down.

She needed to prove that difference was more than luck and water, running engines and enough gasoline. That it existed even if she had to defend those things. And it was something he thought might survive the loss of all of those. At least if they tried to hold tight to it. Nurtured it, as she was now.

He’d made another sound, soft and rough in his throat, and it brought her bending down to kiss him again. It was a kiss that planted seeds. Her touch germinated them, broke them open. He felt the roots spreading, winding around his lungs.

“Okay,” he murmured to her. “Yes.” Answering questions she hadn’t asked, affirming things he could barely describe.  

Until she nodded, for a long moment it wasn’t clear if she’d heard. It almost didn’t matter whether she did, but it was unnerving, a little, to be subject to scrutiny so intense—her hand and eyes moving over him to the exclusion of all else. Gentle yet unwavering. Max didn’t need to reach for her, she was right there, and when he didn’t return her touch or guide the way she handled his own body it seemed to give her more space to be as she wanted. That, too, was a kindness.

He let her be gentle to him as she couldn’t be to anyone else, not in quite this way. Even as it overwhelmed him. Time moved slower around her. She filled all the moments he otherwise wouldn’t feel anything in. Found all the parts of him that were usually numb. His awareness stretched in a world larger than he was usually conscious of, but not an empty one, not a vast desert he could be swallowed or lost in. Not when she had found him.

She braced her left elbow on his knee, so he held steady for her. Even as her fingertips traced down his stomach and along his legs, seeking out vulnerability. She could find that in between them, very easily, but she didn’t yet seem interested. Nothing had touched his sex except water as she washed him and the faintest brush of her body as she had moved down. He was erect and she could probably finish him with just a touch. Waiting drew it out, waiting was all right—was better—a flush started over his chest as her fingernail followed the crease of skin under his right knee. It felt excruciatingly ticklish and pleasant at the same time. Pleasure was an alien sensation crawling under his skin. He couldn’t keep from shivering.

He could feel his pulse thrumming beneath his palms. He pushed them up with deep breaths, and excitement was washed over with something very like serenity without being replaced by it. His lips pulled wider—smiling. Maybe Furiosa could see that. She made a sound like a thoughtful hum, like laughter.

Her fingertips ran down his inner thigh. His breath caught as she drew closer, as her touch became more… Her calves hooked around his, urging them a little wider. She cupped his balls and brushed the skin behind them. He grunted, much more surprised than bothered. And again, the noise rolling from his throat pensively as she skimmed further back, giving more the idea of contact than the fact of it. But his body seemed to take it as a promise, with that now-familiar mixture of anticipation and arousal.

She raised her fingers to his mouth. Didn’t touch him, didn’t mean to silence him. She was asking for something else. He gave it, opening his mouth, letting in and sucking. His tongue curled, leaving her slick with saliva. She didn’t move until he released her.

Then it seemed to go fast, not because she rushed but because he wasn’t sure how to prepare for her. Relax. Another inhalation and slow exhale. Pressure—she was wet and gentle, but it didn’t feel like anything but what it was—and then fullness. The pulse of her inside him. He felt stretched, he felt warm, and he wondered what she had felt when his fingers were inside her. If it was anything like this.

She gave a sharp sigh as he trembled and tightened around her. Then tension eased. With the end of her left arm she rubbed small circles over his knee and thigh, a motion he wasn’t sure was conscious. But when she lowered her head and kissed his skin there, he knew it was.

When her fingers moved, his entire consciousness seemed to warp around the sensation. Neither pleasant nor unpleasant so much as strange. It was good, at least, to be filled by her, her presence undeniable, reassuring even as it verged on overwhelming. Until she pushed a little deeper, curled her finger and stroked. She reached somewhere inside him that brought lightening and the cyclonic whirl of a storm.

He heard the short chuckle that meant something surprised her, but he couldn’t know what he had done. His entire body had jumped and left his mind behind. It was good, being mindless, and whatever it was she had touched off felt…he couldn’t find the word, he only hoped that she would do it again.

She did.

His hips jerked, trying to meet her. He remembered to breathe, just barely, but realized a sound was coming from his throat, alarmingly close to a whine. Furiosa didn’t laugh at that. He recognized the concentration in her body language. And he’d thought she’d been unnervingly intent before.

Not that he was unnerved; his pulse was spiking and something hot and electric was moving over every nerve in his body but it wasn’t alarm. More like a suggestion that he finally take notice. After she’d mapped every centimeter of him inside and out, it was easy to do.

Sweat rose on his skin, a clammy slickness over feverish warmth. One of his hands had dropped and was gripping the blankets. He could have touched her; part of him wanted to. But there was no need. They were already so close. The tops of her thighs pressed against the undersides of his. With each stroke, her palm rubbed his balls. Her hips moved with it, too, and when he strained his eyes in the growing darkness he could make out how the backs of her knuckles brushed over her labia and clit. It couldn’t be enough, not nearly enough to provide more than a tease of sensation. But he heard her panting, felt her body tremble close to his—she was excited just by the act of getting him off.

He so hard now he could feel his pulse pounding in his cock. She pulled out to the fingertip, then added a second finger. He reared off the sand. Twisting inside him, she was wringing out sounds and shudders. He hoped she never stopped. He needed it to stop; he needed to come. It felt like he might disintegrate if he didn’t.

She didn’t seem to care what his hands did now, so he gripped himself and began to stroke. His rhythm became steady, slowly matched by hers. And once they were acting together— _yes,_ each heartbeat pushed him closer, and then he was on the edge and it cut as deeply as anything ever had. Clean and mindless bliss.

He came out of it sticky and wet. His legs and chest were washed by sweat and a line of pale semen marked his stomach. He rubbed his palm on his thigh. Furiosa leaned back and reached for the waterskin.

“I didn’t know it would be that easy,” she said, rinsing her fingers. She ripped the cleaning cloth in two and used half for her hand.

 _Easy_ wasn’t the word he’d use, but he couldn’t disagree with the warmth in her voice. She sounded pleased, as well as surprised.

He didn’t ask, but he wondered if she had ever done that before, or anything like it—not the specifics of the act but whether she’d ever been able to enjoy getting someone off.  If she’d ever focused all her attention on bringing a partner pleasure and succeeded. If she’d ever had the chance.

He didn’t pity her. Pity would bring up too much, and nothing either of them needed. Max hadn’t had the chance nearly often enough, either.

He patted the blanket beside him. “Hey…”

She curled up there, on his right. Turning, he nuzzled her shoulder. With a sigh, she rolled her head, letting him move higher. Past her neck, carefully. Along her jaw. Then down, across her collarbone, over her breasts. Smelling, tasting skin-sweetness and clean salt and a hint of bitter dust. She startled as the waterskin poured out, but then spread her limbs, letting him reach everywhere with the second half of the wash cloth. It felt good to do something for her. He saw her lips curving in an expression of not-quite-private satisfaction.

 The fabric came away pink from between her legs, but only faintly. As he had said, what was a little more blood? When he settled beside her again, and she took his hand and guided it down, he was more than ready to touch her.

Past the rasp of her hair, she was slick and warm. Not unfamiliar, after the afternoon beneath the overhang, and yet never familiar enough. With each stroke and twist of his fingers, he explored how she felt and how it made her feel. He found her clit already swollen, tender from her earlier excitement. Her breathing roughened as the pad of his thumb rolled over it.

“Can you…” she started.

Max looked up towards her face. The sun was long set, and he couldn’t make out as much as he’d like—only the movement as she swallowed, moved words around in her mouth.

“I want it like this,” she said. “Your hands. Just…”

“Yeah. All right.” In a way it was more than all right; he didn’t think he’d be ready for anything else for a while, for far too long to wait to make her come. Not after she’d worked over him so completely. And he was eager to return the favor.

He ran his free hand up and down her spine, feeling the muscles in her back flex. As he reached the base of it her legs fell open a little wider and her body pulled at his touch, taking it deeper with a mixture of relaxation and eagerness. He rubbed inside her and found a small patch of rougher tissue. He brought his fingertip against it with a light stroke, almost a tap. Her thighs suddenly closed, gripping tightly, holding him in.

“There,” she said. And let a rough breath out in a chuckle, in surprise.

He traced a pattern over the place, varying the pressure until she started to thrust down on his hand. She moved with more roughness than he would have if it were up to him, but after all she knew best—and he was still, not sore exactly, better than that, yet sensitive in a way that reminded him of how he had strained to meet her before. His fingers glided across her slick flesh. He felt wetness well around his knuckles and could faintly smell it.

Her hand came down to join his, caressing her mound and slowly spreading her lips to reach her clit. He moved his thumb to give her room. His other hand rose to one breast, moving completely by touch. The last light had vanished. They didn’t need it. Her back arched, pushing her erect nipple against his palm. He leaned over her to lap at the other one. When it was hard and wet he drew back enough to breathe a stream of air over it, and he felt her pleasure tightening around him. His mouth was watering from the scent of her and the engine-heat of her body. Her muscles thrummed—everywhere he touched he felt her strength. He let her breast brush against his lips, soft with a point of sharpness, and his mouth was so sensitive that she almost stung it, and she was moaning as if his stroking fingertips were stinging her, close to too much but too good to stop…

She came without words, with a long moan that vibrated in her chest and in his where he pressed close to her, with matching tremors that pulled at his fingers. He held her as her heartbeat slowed, cradled in her arms, too.

As she combed through his hair, he began to drift off. He came back with a start.

“What is it?” she asked as he moved away.

“Don’t…probably shouldn’t sleep right next to me.” He would like her to, but it felt too risky. “In case…nightmares.” In case he woke lashing out, striking at terrors that weren’t there. He didn’t _think_ he was truly dangerous to anyone in that state, but he hadn’t had the experience to tell and he didn’t want to find out he was wrong.

“Okay.” Her fingers skimmed his shoulder but the touch didn’t linger. She wrapped one of the blankets around her shoulders. “Should I wake you? Would it help?”

“I’ll wake myself.” He usually did.

They divided the blankets and made a second bed for her just out of arm’s reach. Several times he heard the change in her breathing, thought she was going to say something. In the end she didn’t.  Before he went back, he reached for her one last time. She turned her face against his palm, one corner of her lips just brushing the scarred base of his finger. The sensation lingered on his skin long into the night.

So did the memory of choked-off breath, bodies heaving in struggle. The glint of the knife.

It wasn’t that they hadn’t been lucky. But he always had nightmares after watching someone die. He always had nightmares after killing. Often enough, he had nightmares anyway, but none worse than these.

Max woke himself several times over the course of the night. He came out of dreams of shattered bone and mouthfuls of blood. Dreams that twisted him until he broke awake. Dreams where he was being chased, but the engine wouldn’t start and his foot stamping on the pedal accomplished nothing and they were getting _closer_. Sometimes he tried to run only for his left leg to give out under him. Sometimes he stayed with the useless car and a shock roared through it, throwing him as the world turned over…and over…and over again. He came out of those with his body twisted in the blankets. Or he was frozen—the only part of him capable of movement was his eyelids, and he knew better than to raise those because of what he’d see there.

Eventually it would pass. And the first thing he looked to was her, a darker shape in the darkness around them. A glimmer where her eyes were open, watching. He closed his and turned away from her and, after a while, they both were asleep again.

Once he heard her twist and break awake from the grip of her own dreams. He opened his eyes. If his being there, if seeing her helped, he was there to do it. She didn’t break their gaze. She didn’t turn away.

At some point it became clear that neither of them were going to get any more rest. They weren’t going back to the dreams. It was still too deep in the night to rise—daylight was a dirty gray stripe above the eastern horizon—but his nightmares didn’t matter anymore. There wasn’t any danger. So he crossed the strip of sand to join her, and she shifted just enough to make a place for him beside her.

Much later, he felt her get up. It was dawn, and he was sure she was preparing to leave. But when he rose and turned to her, she seemed to have been waiting for him.


	3. Grace

From one of the packs on her motorcycle, she made breakfast, some sort of dried powder that mixed with water into a paste. Sand had more flavor, but it went down easily enough. Then she offered a second helping.

He balanced the full bowl carefully. “Thank you.”

As easily as they slipped out, the words brought him up short. When was the last time he’d said them? Not to her—he’d never thanked her before. It would be too little after all this time, and now, for a comparatively minor favor, it felt like too much.

Not that food was ever minor in the Wasteland. She shrugged her shoulders, bare above the blanket she’d wrapped around her body. “You should thank them back home.”

He didn’t need to ask who; between him and her, there were only four of _them_ (except in memory and in certain dreams, when there were five, or six) and she only meant one place by _home_.

And he didn’t need to ask, because if there were anything he could do to help she would have told him, but he wanted to know, whether or not it mattered— “How are they?”

“They’re…” She turned her face away, but he could still see an edge of it. He could see the pull at the corner of her mouth before she said, “They’re happier than I would have thought possible.”

Silence rested between them like a living thing. It seemed she might try to dig up more words in elaboration, explanation that proved beyond her. But nothing came. Maybe she couldn’t fathom it herself. And he believed her anyway. Or if not despite, exactly because of her inability to explain. Because of the deep-touched surprise in her voice. She hadn’t expected happiness in a long time, not for anyone.

“Why aren’t you there with them?”

Her head turned slowly to each side. Not exactly a shake, not denying the question or the idea. When her face was to him he could still see her half-tugged smile. “I’m not what they need. Not there. Not to stay.” And then she gave him a look, as if to say, _You understand_.

She’d done what she’d set out to do; she’d done well by them. It wasn’t that she was unwelcome at the Citadel. Or whatever it might be called now, under the rule of women. Of her family. Her home. But she couldn’t lead them. They didn’t need a warrior in their halls anymore.

And maybe…if she was content to only visit them every now and then, if she felt her place was not at home but out here, that she belonged in the Wastelands, it might be because of what she thought she deserved. Still seeking redemption. Finding it by protecting them, by eliminating the raiders and scavengers that could pose a threat, by creating for herself a righteous cause. He did understand.

A part of Max could envy her for at least knowing what she did and why, for having a home she could one day earn her way back to. Yet he didn’t. He knew her route wasn’t simple or easy. Or safe.

He’d seen enough of it yesterday. In hindsight it seemed clear that finding the raiders had been part of her patrol, defending the Citadel from any who might cross the far edge of its territory. The timing had been lucky for him. Sometimes he was lucky. Again he remembered her choking hands and her curt decision to leave the survivors without supplies. He knew they’d done something to deserve it. Belatedly, he wondered if some of her ruthlessness was because she had found him in their hands.

But if she hadn’t—or if he hadn’t been there—or if he hadn’t fired in time—he shook his head, closing off that line of thought.

“What is it?” she asked, noticing the gesture.

He repeated his admission from the day before. “I’m afraid…” This time he knew what of. “That we won’t meet again.”

In the end, luck always ran out.

It hadn’t mattered so much before, when he had nothing and nowhere to go. He was even getting used to having nothing to run from. The ghosts hadn’t gone silent, but he didn’t try to escape them anymore. He knew they wouldn’t hurt him. They were just reminders of what he had lost before. Of who he had lost.

Furiosa was watching him again—not pinning him with a direct stare, but he felt himself in her awareness, from the corners of her eyes. “There comes a time when we don’t,” she said. Quietly. Simply. Her hand, resting on her thigh, began to curl as she said it. Clasping air. Then with a smooth flex unfolding, letting it go.

He hadn’t been looking for her to deny it. Still, her agreement took him aback—not the knowledge but the way she seemed to carry it. Almost peacefully. And somehow, on her tongue, it didn’t sound at odds with what she had said the night before— _We’re gonna be okay._

She stood and walked over to him. “But not yet,” she said.

Her hand touched his cheek, turning him towards her. Their mouths brushed each other before deepening into a kiss. He held her shoulders tightly enough to feel the muscle in them, but she didn’t complain. Her teeth pulled at his lower lip with the same gentle, firm insistence.

When the kiss ended, she drew back but didn’t leave, and his hands continued moving over her. She let him touch her face, tracing the thin scars on her eyebrow and cheek, stroking the roots at her hairline. It had grown longer since they first met. Time had chromed some of the strands at her temples.

Furiosa untucked the blanket and let it drop. It fell around her hips, and his touch followed its fall, running over her chest and stomach. Her scars and bruises were visible in the daylight, and between them a spreading blush.

Her hand hovered over his, following it but not pushing or grasping, not needing to guide. His other hand reached under the blanket, settling on her knee. His thumb stroked her skin but he didn’t move higher. A question in the touch.

She angled her leg wider, giving him room to reach. The skin at the inside of her thighs was smooth and firm like polished stone, but he felt it rise in tiny bumps as he swept over it. Her sex was heated but not wet, although she didn’t seem to mind his exploration there.

As he kissed her below the collar bone, his hands circled her hips to the small of her back, pushing the blanket away. Her arm went around him to return the embrace, and he let it. His fingertips climbed from knob to knob of her spine while his thumbs rubbed the skin alongside it. Hers didn’t mirror the movement over his scarred flesh—although he didn’t think he would mind if they did, now.

A thoughtful _hmm_ stirred his hair when he licked the curve of her breast. His touch swept around her, caressing her ribs with his palms and the backs of his knuckles. He understood instantly, completely what she had done the night before. How good and necessary it felt just to touch someone like this. Not to confirm her presence—of all things, he knew she was real—but to affirm it. To show all that they could do together, because they weren’t separated, not yet.

He curled his hand at the strip of flesh between the bowl of her pelvis and gradual swell of her full stomach, moved over it with his fingertips, tickling lightly so that his nails didn’t catch at lines of scar tissue. If she felt vulnerable, she didn’t show it. Her lips were moving lower over his forehead, then pursing over the scar on his right eyebrow.

His palm rolled over her breast, began to angle towards her neck—but then he caught himself, turned away to skim over her shoulder instead. He followed her left arm down to its termination in a gentle stroke, feeling muscle firm with strength but without tension. Her hand was in his hair, moving from side to side, then stroking back. Down to his nape but never lower. As cautious as he had been around her throat. Without being distracted with guilt, Max did feel somewhat responsible for her hesitance about being touched there. He’d grabbed her by it in their first fight, as violently as any other man who’d attacked her that day. Her instincts remembered. There was a muscle-deep vigilance that became hard to unlearn even when the mind knew it was safe. Even, maybe, when the heart knew it was.

And Furiosa had served, however unwillingly, the regime that gave him the marks on his back. Did she think that was why he had kept them from her? That she wasn’t worthy of being trusted with them? That was never his reason—it had never been any fault with her—and he would find a way to reassure her of it. Some time. Now her hand was at his jaw, tipping his head for a deeper kiss.

Then she seemed to hold his head in place just by the pressure of her lips, and her fingers were cupped over his again, following them. But he was becoming harder to follow, he knew that, caught up in trying to touch her everywhere at once. Maybe she was bothered by being outmatched by him—although her appreciative humming continued, a vibration that filled his mouth as sweet as water—but eventually, she caught one of his hands and pulled it from her body. Her hips hooked, moving her body forward and sending him to his back on the blanket-covered sand. Her eyes were open and very green in the morning sunlight as they followed her hand, which gently held his over his shoulder. His other hand rose to the same angle on the other side. He recognized the moment she was recreating. The reason why was more elusive to him. She didn’t force him down, and didn’t act out of panic, either—her breathing was steady, her lips in a firm curve.

Clearly, she liked what she saw. And maybe on some level she needed to see it. Not for reassurance, or not only that. She must know she was safe around him whatever happened. But this specific image… He knew his gesture had been significant to her. But he might never learn all the ways in which it was.

With a last kiss, she rose off of him. He turned his head, following her as she rummaged around the camp. She came up with the white scarf she had given him. She played with the material between her fingers, wound it around her left elbow. He thought she might want to take it back; another reminder. But she returned and knelt over him, then started to wrap the fabric around his wrists, pulling them together. All the while she kept her eyes on his face. If he had given any sign that she should stop, he knew she would have. And maybe he should have. Instinct screamed this was a foolish idea, that she could leave him bound and naked and helpless on the sand.

Instinct hadn’t always guided him the right way. It was good to block it out, to defy it this once.

She held one end of the scarf between her teeth to hold it as she tied it off. His arms relaxed and he felt how flimsy a bond it really made. He could pull it apart or twist out of it in a few moments. But it held securely enough so long as he didn’t fight it, and the texture was soft, pleasant. Instead of confinement, it almost felt like a reward.

As she was about to rise, he turned and kissed the inside of her leg. His lips landed nearer to her knee than her thigh, a sort of echo of the kiss she had given him the night before. Mirroring her tenderness, showing his understanding.

She spread her legs, coming lower, letting his kisses travel farther up her skin. And then, hovering just over his mouth, she hesitated even as his lips parted. “Do you want to?”

He nodded and she came down.

Her taste was mineral, with a hint of iron, and it didn’t taste clean or unclean, only real, only hers. Soon washes of salt-sweetness met his tongue. He hummed at it, savoring it, and the vibration of the sound traveled all over her body. She had eclipsed the sky and he saw only the tremors of muscles beneath her skin. Then he shut his eyes. Knew her by feeling, flavor, and scent.

His lips teased out her wetness, lush and rich, and he wondered how she thought he could ever have objected to this. His mouth watered with her. Her hand rested in his hair, not pulling but guiding, and then holding him steady as the rock of her hips took on more of the work.

He licked her to arousal, but she pulled away before she came, leaving him sticky and growing hard. She gripped his cock, squeezing just enough to assure that, no, she hadn’t forgotten, she wouldn’t neglect him. Any of him. Her fingers stroked lower, back over where they had been the night before, but did no more than tease and remind. He shivered at their touch, his legs spreading wider. It was less distracting not having to worry about what his hands did. Only hers. She showed all she had learned, how well she knew him. How gentle she could be, and something more than gentleness, when something more was what he needed.

She used her tongue, too, laving one nipple, sucking at his skin until she left a mark. If she had put her mouth on his erection it would have finished him right away, so he could only be grateful that she didn’t. She stroked his chest and shoulders with her forearms, a broader, firmer caress. Her hand slipped between her thighs and she knelt up to show him how she touched herself. It wasn’t a performance—too easy, too simple, and sometimes hard to see from the shadows and how her folds closed around her fingers—but a sharing, so that he realized the source of each of her gasps.

It was tender—not always gentle, but always tender, towards both of them. Because she could be. Because she wanted to be. And because, he sensed, she wanted tenderness too, and the way she could communicate that desire was by showing it.

He threw his head back, letting her lips brush his neck, feeling her sniff as the rasp of his beard against her cheek took her aback. Even that seemed to jump right to his cock, and sensation began to be a strain, an ache, a winding tension through his body that needed somehow to be released. When his hips stuttered upward, his erection brushing the curve of her leg, she showed something like mercy again and moved down to meet it.

He had to use a sound, a sharp grunt, instead of a hand gesture to warn her before Furiosa’s straddling knee connected with the bruise starting on his thigh. It was from the fight yesterday, a blow that had just missed his groin and took most of the night to become blue and tender. Following his gaze, she nodded and adjusted her stance, careful of him.

As she lowered herself, an expression of surprise flitted across her face. Across his, too, probably. Neither of them were used to this yet. To the feeling—full, close, warm, slick, and welcoming; good.

In this position, she could ride him, use him with or without his cooperation, but she didn’t. She moved slowly at first, curving the angle to join him. And even bound he could rise against her, into her. Their thrusts were deep, building faster. Her hand pressed his chest for leverage.

There was a balance between them of something—pleasure, power, trust—that kept it from being a matter of using or even a mockery of a struggle. He could have freed himself in a moment, but he didn’t need to. She tied him, but she didn’t need to. She didn’t need to overpower him to trust him not to overpower her. She wasn’t only taking her pleasure but letting him give it to her.

Which he did, meeting her, their hips finding just the right circles to trace. By kissing her as she bent over his body. Her hand came to rest between his, their fingers entwining. Her tongue passed his lips, mirroring and returning the rhythm of their thrusts. His stroked against hers. 

Then she had pulled away, rising up. She built to climax on a string of gasped words, too fast for him to follow and distorted by passion. They broke off in a cry, her head thrown back, sun gilding the sweat-slick curve of her throat.

Feeling her come around him tipped Max over the edge. Furiosa bore down, her inner muscles trembling. She clutched his shoulder until the nails dug in, then caught herself and stroked his marked skin soothingly. The bite of pain was nothing but another sensation in the storm of them sweeping over and through him.

He spent inside her, and only belatedly worried whether that would be okay. But if it wasn’t, she wouldn’t have let him. That much he knew without being told. So much went unsaid between them, and there were things he could guess or intuit or draw in parallel to his own experience, but not all of them. Still, he trusted her judgment.

She gently stroked his jaw and cheeks above the beard. Her thumb kissed the corner of his eye, brushing away sleep-sand. And then in one smooth movement she reached for the scarf around his wrists and unknotted it, pulling the loop apart. He put his freed arms around her. Her hand to his back helped him sit up.

He kissed his way down her forehead, her eyebrows—their scars on them matched, he realized as his lips brushed hers—her eyelids and cheeks and the bridge of her nose. Her mouth, chin, and jaw. And then, as she bent her head back, she let him brush her neck. He didn’t touch it with anything but a kiss.

“I’ve had too many hands grabbing me there,” she said, confirming part of his suspicions. “But this is all right.”

Her hand brushed between his shoulder blades, and that was all right, too. He wasn’t sure he was ready for her to look, but touching was fine. Nor was he ashamed of it any longer. The boundary helped, keeping it in place was a measure of control and trust. All and only that.

They would have to move on again soon. To leave. Looking around, he saw the sun had risen and their camp cast the only dark shadows on the sand. They were exposed, although this area was as clear as raiders as it would ever be after the attack yesterday.

Exposed too in another way. He drew back from her bared throat. Intimacy was…good…and yet it wasn’t something they could endure for long. Not yet.

“You could go back to the Citadel anytime,” she said as they dressed and packed. “You know you’d be welcome there. To stay or just to reprovision.”

“We could go back,” he said, and part of him found the thought so unlikely, so fantastic, that it could be a challenge to her or a refusal. But it wasn’t. He meant it. “Someday we could return…”

“Together,” she agreed.

They rode together to the spring she had spoken of the day before. She led the way, a quarter of a day north, over sand and stone to a place folded in a warren of rocks. Scraggly green bushes grew around the crack of a cavern, and lizards scampered into the shadows as they walked their bikes towards it. They could only fit inside by moving single file.

A shaft of light fell from a break in the stone overhead, but he could hear the spring more than see it. Water trickled down the back wall in a steady stream. A niche beside it held the carved figure of a woman, round-bellied, holding dried leaves from the plants outside in the cradle of her arms. Before her was an arrangement of small animal bones. Furiosa knelt and shifted some of them, turning one and stacking others. Max remained behind her, silent, uncertain if this was a ritual or else some sort of signal to anyone who came here after them. Perhaps both. This wasn’t part of the Citadel’s territory, that much was clear—or at least it hadn’t been. Now it belonged unquestionably to the Many Mothers.

“Will you know the way back here?” she asked as she stood.

He nodded. Not many features had marked the route, but he’d developed a sharp memory for locations. The map helped, and she knew he had it—perhaps her question offered permission for him to mark it down—but he wouldn’t make a record of this. One day someone else might see the map, even someone he would rather not. Ambushes happened. Luck would eventually run out. He wouldn’t risk this place.

They set their filled waterskins on the bikes and walked them out until the path widened enough to mount up. Before they did, they turned to each other.

“Goodbye,” Max said for the first time.

She nodded.

It was, for now. At the mouth of the canyon they would part ways. Maybe forever. But he thought not.

Her patrol and his route would cross again. And maybe the next time they did, they wouldn’t separate again. They were coming closer to that point—staying together longer each time, trusting each other more. He didn’t know where it was headed. He didn’t know if they would live long enough to see it to the end, or what that end might be. The Citadel? Or elsewhere?

It didn’t matter. He had been on a journey without a destination for so long that he no longer needed one. Only waypoints.

She leaned close to him. They rested against each other, forehead-to-forehead, if only for a moment.

Before she drew back, she whispered to him, “West.”


	4. Coda: After Fury

Outside, the storm raged. Dust swirled, illuminated in flashes of lightening that stained it weird, rich colors. The sound was so loud it deafened, became silence.

They had brought their motorcycles in under the lip of the overhang to add another barrier of iron and leather between their bodies and the storm. But through gaps in the makeshift wall Max could see the sky blotted out with ribbons of white heat and twisters gulping sand beyond the rocks. Funneled between stone, wind howled. It tugged at their buckled saddlebags and scoured the hollows overhead.

He recognized this place—the same canyon where he and Furiosa had met, the same overhang they had sheltered under the first time. She had been there when he found it, seeking a familiar shelter as the dust clouds gathered. Now he knew this canyon was part of her patrol route. Still, it was luck that they had met here at the same time.

They lay curled together, his arm around her waist, her hand on his. The touch was simple, intimate, not yet sensual. They hadn’t even kissed. They might in time, or they might not. The more he saw of her the less essential it seemed to spill passion right away, to rely on the efforts of bodies to shape what words couldn’t. Words would come, or they wouldn’t. So much was understood already. Yet nothing was expected. He could bare himself to her but he didn’t have to. They could give each other anything at any time, or refuse it. Sex wouldn’t be necessary but it might be good, once the tension of the storm passed.

At first she had been the one to curl around him, her breath on his nape, the warmth of her at his back. Even with layers of clothing between them he had felt her touch, and it had been comforting. Later on Furiosa had turned to watch the storm. Her inhalation, so deep and abrupt it was almost a gasp, formed pressure raising his hand and bringing her spine against his chest. The realization that his body was shaping to the rhythms of a second, living body seemed brand new each time.

Their hair stood on end at a rush of static. They held still until it passed. The storm was beginning to die down.

Her fingers folded between his. She might take his hand up higher, so he could feel more, or lower, so she could feel more. He would be glad if she did. He would be content if she didn’t.

It was enough, it was so much, just to hold her.

He felt the growing thing inside him again, spreading its leaves to a sun beyond the storm.

They might stay.

Not forever. But a little longer this time.

They might move on.

Together, even.

No expectations. No requirements. But, for the first time in a long time, something like hope.

Now that the Wasteland had become a place of meetings.

The fury of the storm outside was abating. The winds whistled but could not reach them, wrapped in safety together, forming a space with their bodies for quiet, for gentleness, for whatever was kind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally I'd planned to end with Chapter 3, but I had this little ficlet idea and it seemed more fitting to close off this story with the two of them together again. Anyway, thank you all for reading, giving kudos, and sharing your encouraging comments! I've very much appreciated them!


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